The McNay welcomes San Antonio-based artist Kelly O’Connor, creator of the ninth monumental installation in the AT&T Lobby. O’Connor’s wall presents a fanciful façade like ones found at Disneyland, a destination the artist visited in 2005 with a grant to study extreme examples of artificial landscapes. Multifaceted Woman stems from the artist’s longstanding interest in theme parks, and what she perceives as our culture’s expanding preoccupation with fleeting, artificial happiness.
O’Connor’s collage approach to art-making frequently features iconic characters, such as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz or Alice from Alice in Wonderland, populating real or imagined sites sourced from American visual culture of the 1950s and 60s. Her work aims to pull back the curtain on the idyllic, artificial stereotypes that have been presented in popular culture for decades.
Kelly O’Connor: Multifaceted Woman is organized for the McNay Art Museum by René Paul Barilleaux, Head of Curatorial Affairs.
This exhibition is a program of The Flora Crichton Visiting Artist Fund.
